Visiting your Kansas City eye doctor on a regular basis is extremely important — for more reasons than you may know. While your eye care clinic is invested in helping to maintain your eyesight and minimize your risk of common eye conditions, they also play a crucial role in your overall health and wellness. How? Because the health of your eyes is tied to the health of various other bodily systems.
How Your Body’s Systems Interact
Consider a common scenario to understand how different bodily systems work in harmony with one another. Jessica ate several slices of greasy pizza, then topped them off with a large hot fudge sundae. It sounded like a great idea at the time, but afterward, she felt bloated, cranky and irritable. One of the reasons this happened is because, in digesting a high-calorie, nutrient-poor meal, the gastrointestinal system has to work pretty hard, causing bloating and other distress symptoms. Plus, her blood sugar and insulin levels underwent a rapid spike from the refined carbs, only adding to her crankiness and discomfort. Amazingly, two seemingly unrelated systems — gastrointestinal and endocrine — had an impact on Jessica’s mood.
Your body’s systems work in tandem with one another to maintain homeostasis, or balance. When something is off with one system, it can quickly lead to problems in other areas.
Your Eyes and Your Health
This may come as a surprise, but when your Kansas City ophthalmologist examines your eyes, they’re not focused on vision alone. Sure, healthy eyes are their primary goal, but to provide quality, informed care they must also assess how your eyesight affects other areas of your health and vice versa. Perhaps this will help you understand why the professionals at your eye care clinic ask questions about your family history, medical history, lifestyle and overall health — all of these factors can influence eye health.
From diabetes to hypertension, your eye doctor can spot tell-tale signs of many general health conditions by examining your eyes. If your eye care provider merely checked out your vision without taking in these other factors, they could be overlooking a critical piece of information.
Redness, dryness, damaged blood vessels, sudden vision changes and other eye issues can actually point to serious health conditions. For example, blurry vision is often one of the first signs that a person is developing diabetes, which means your eye doctor is more likely to spot this condition before another provider. A close-up, in-depth analysis of the structures of the eye can help your eye doctor diagnose a serious health condition so that you can get adequate treatment before it worsens. Properly treating conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, autoimmune disorder and neurological disorders can prevent vision loss or permanent changes to your eyesight.
The Importance of Eye Exams
Many people often neglect to get regular physicals and only see their family doctors in times of medical emergency. If this describes you, it is important that you visit your Kansas City eye doctors on a regular basis. A comprehensive eye exam can help your ophthalmologist identify not only common eye problems, but the early symptoms of other chronic diseases, too. Getting an exam could save your life.
Contact us for a routine appointment to see what your eyes are saying about your overall health and well-being.
Posted April 19, 2018 by Silverstein Eye Centers